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In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the “Hockey
Stick,” a chart showing global temperature data over the past one
thousand years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen
with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The
inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the
industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere and warming the planet.

The Hockey Stick became a
central icon in the “climate wars,” and well-funded science deniers
immediately attacked the chart and the scientists responsible for it.
Yet the controversy has had little to do with the depicted temperature
rise and much more with the perceived threat the graph posed to those
who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect our
environment and planet. Michael E. Mann, lead author of the original
paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the real story of
the science and politics behind this controversy. He introduces key
figures in the oil and energy industries, and the media front groups who
do their bidding in sometimes slick, bare-knuckled ways to cast doubt
on the science. Mann concludes with an account of the “Climategate”
scandal, the 2009 hacking of climate scientists’ emails. Throughout,
Mann reveals the role of science deniers, abetted by an uninformed
media, in once again diverting attention away from one of the central
scientific and policy issues of our time.